This whistle was also what gave Draper his long-lived nickname of ‘Captain Crunch’, along with a number of variations thereof.ĭraper used this whistle to develop what was called a blue box - an electronic device that reproduced various tones used by the phone company, mainly for the purposes of placing free calls and generally causing mischief. For example, one long whistle reset the line, essentially allowing the caller to enter an operator mode, from where they could use short whistles to dial a number, using a single tone for a “1”, two for a “2”, and so on. With the help of Engressia - who also went by the nickname Joybubbles - Draper discovered that a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes produced the exact 2600 Hz tone that allowed control of single frequency phone systems. It was through this number that the phreaks first got in contact with him - wanting help to develop a more high-tech answer to the practice of phreaking. He broadcast a telephone number for listeners to call, in order to get feedback on the reception his station was getting.
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A small community of phreaks slowly developed around this discovery, and collectively they learned how to exploit this knowledge to get free long-distance and international calls.ĭraper ended up getting involved in this community while testing a pirate radio transmitter he had built. It all began in 1957 when Joe Engressia, a blind boy with perfect pitch, discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C, at a frequency of 2600 Hz, would stop a dialled phone recording. It was essentially a precursor to computer hacking as we know it today - although instead of hacking computers, ‘phreaks’ would hack the phone lines. Phone phreaking was a practice that started in the late 1950s in the USA, experiencing its so-called ‘Golden Age’ through the 60s and 70s. There, he continued in military-related positions for a short time, first as an engineering technician at National Semiconductor, and then at Hugle International where he worked on an early cordless phone design.Ī blue box like those Draper helped develop
He was honourably discharged in 1968, when he relocated to the incipient Silicon Valley. Even then, his predilection for doing things in a legally dubious manner was apparent - helping his fellow servicemen make free calls home from a station in Alaska, and once creating a pirate radio station when he was later stationed in Maine. Born in 1943 as the son of a United States Air Force engineer, Draper initially followed in his father’s footsteps, entering the Air Force In 1964.
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